Saturday, 9 February 2013

German Education Minister Annette Schavan has resigned after it was alleged that she had often merely read word for word from scripts presented to her by a team of speech writers, having passed them off as her own work.

Ms Schavan, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, insisted that she her public pronouncements were all in her own words and that she had never copied verbatim. In 2011, Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg also quit after allegations surfaced that he signed off several contracts in his own name without even having read them...

Ms Schavan added that her main priority was to protect her department and the government. "First the nation, then the party, then myself," Ms Schavan added, citing words used by former state prime minister Erwin Teufel.